


It Flickers

by unbecomings



Series: Runnin' Down A Dream [4]
Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22947955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbecomings/pseuds/unbecomings
Summary: Kelley waits a long, long time for Emily.
Relationships: Emily Sonnett & Lindsey Horan, Kelley O'Hara & Alex Morgan, Kelley O'Hara & Christen Press, Kelley O'Hara/Emily Sonnett
Series: Runnin' Down A Dream [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1478657
Comments: 26
Kudos: 122





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me on twitter @unbecomings_ or at my curiouscat by the same name :)

**you grow up, paint a picture of your life  
like a fixture in your mind  
and it tricks you once or twice  
or three times  
and I know it's not right, and I know it's not fair  
sometimes you fall in love, sometimes it's not there  
it flickers**

-

The first time Kelley lays eyes on Christen she falls in love instantly.

The thing about Christen Press is that everybody falls in love with her the second they meet her. Kelley is really, truly convinced of that. Christen is 18. Kelley is 19. Christen is straight. Kelley is...not. At least, Kelley _thinks_ Christen is straight, and it’s really none of her business either way. They’re teammates. There’s rules about that sort of thing. Nobody talks about it, but Kelley knows it wouldn’t be cool to do, and anyway, Christen is too shy to even make eye contact with her.

Kelley wants, more than anything, to be close to Christen. She doesn’t have to try on the field because they find each other effortlessly. They have the kind of chemistry that you can’t manufacture. Kelley has been playing soccer since she could walk and she’s never connected with anyone the way she connects with Christen. She’s a freshman so she doesn’t get to start, at least not at first, but Kelley can tell it’s just a matter of time.

It starts against Notre Dame. They go into halftime down one, Christen comes on and ten minutes later Kelley scores off of a play that Christen started. Christen gets an assist, Stanford wins the game, and Kelley gives it a month before Christen’s a regular in the starting eleven. When Christen scores her first goal two games later Kelley celebrates from the bench. 

Being close to Christen off the field is something else. They all live on the same floor in the same dorm, but Kelley never sees Christen. They don’t have any of the same classes and Kelley’s not completely convinced that Christen even goes to class. She mentions it briefly to Rachel, who looks up from her anatomy textbook to give Kelley one of _those_ looks.

“Kel,” Rachel says, “I’m sure she goes to class.”

“I just never see her, that’s all,” Kelley says, “don’t you think that’s weird?”

“You see her at practice,” Rachel says. When Kelley doesn’t answer, she rests her chin in her hand.

“Getting the feeling you’re not concerned about her GPA,” Rachel says.

“Shut up,” Kelley says, but she knows that she’s bright red. She also knows that Rachel would rather die than expose her--Rachel, who’s one of two people at Stanford who even know that Kelley is gay--so her embarrassment, as potent as it might be, is harmless. 

“She’s cute,” Rachel says, “but, you know.”

“Straight,” Kelley says, “I know.”

“No,” Rachel says, “I mean, I don’t know if she is, but it doesn’t matter because she’s a teammate.”

“I know,” Kelley says.

Here’s what she doesn’t say: if she’s right, and Christen is her soulmate, it won’t matter if they’re teammates or not.

-

Maybe Christen isn’t her soulmate. 

The second year they play together, Christen comes back to school with a boyfriend. She talks about him constantly; she has a picture of him with her that she shows to everyone. A disposable camera picture, as if he doesn’t have a Facebook page (he does, Kelley has seen it, though that’s not something she’s proud of). The boyfriend is just one of many things that have changed over the summer: Christen is taller and stronger, her hair is longer, her smile is brighter, and her new wave of confidence has hit Kelley like a fright train. 

Of course, Christen could be dating this guy—Rory, as in Gilmore—and still be Kelley’s soulmate. But Kelley has her suspicions. Christen doesn’t seem like the kind of person to want to waste her time _or_ the kind of person to have blind faith that she’ll dream about this guy and make it worth her time. Nobody has asked her straight up if she dreamt about him. 

Kelley decides she doesn’t want to know. 

-

Ironically, they get closer once Christen has a boyfriend. Kelley tries not to read into it that Christen never mentions Rory around her. Part of her wants to believe there’s a hidden reason for that, but if anything it’s because she’s never expressed any interest in Rory at all. 

They end up in the same anthropology class, and Christen starts coming to Kelley’s room the night before their Thursday class so that they can prep for their weekly quizzes. They don’t gossip much, but Kelley spends two full weeks trying to get Christen to talk about something other than class and when she finally succeeds they spend an extra hour talking about the Bundesliga. 

It feels good to be close to Christen and Kelley tells herself there’s nothing wrong with that. Christen is her teammate, they should be friends. It’ll be better for the team if they are. And Kelley can handle it, it’s just a crush now, knowing that Christen is probably not hers. Kelley’s had crushes before. She’s had worse ones than this.

They start playing better and better together. Before they know it Christen and Kelley are both locked-in starters on one of the best college teams in the _world_. And what could be better than that? Than getting to step on the field with Christen and know they’re about to dominate together?

Nothing. Kelley is sure. Not even love. 

-

Before they all go home for Thanksgiving, someone finally asks Christen about Rory. 

They’re all a little tipsy. Kelley has an arm around Ali’s shoulders and a PBR in one hand. She’s not thinking about how long Christen’s legs are in the shorts she’s rolled up. She’s not thinking about Christen’s smile when someone makes her laugh. She’s finally not thinking at all when the question gets asked, and Kelley doesn’t even see who asks it.

“So is Rory your...dream guy?”

Christen’s smile falls. 

“Um,” she says, “he’s great.”

“But did you dream about him?” Kelley blurts, and Ali reaches around to pinch her in the back. 

“No,” Christen says defensively, “but I will.”

-

Rory is gone by January. Kelley feels responsible for it.

They didn’t really talk over break. Kelley spent it in Georgia fooling around with high school friends and trying to forget—trying to forget soulmates and what happened with Christen and everything that wasn’t cheap beer and soccer. 

When they get back to school, Rory is gone and Christen is different again, quieter and more serious. She’s not shy like she was as a freshman, but she’s closed down and far away, and she never comes to Kelley’s dorm room anymore. 

She thinks it’s a completely lost cause until Christen corners her after practice. Kelley always stays after everyone else, and she’s not expecting anyone to be there with her. She gets ready to do some planks, kneeling in the grass, and startles when she hears Christen’s voice behind her. 

“Hey,” Christen says, and Kelley twists around on her knees. She looks up at Christen, shielding her eyes from the setting sun. Christen bites her lips, then sits in the grass next to Kelley, folding her legs under her. 

“Hi,” Kelley says. Then, when Christen doesn’t speak, she adds, “you okay?”

“I think I’m gay,” Christen says, reaching down to pluck at the grass next to her.

Kelley takes a deep breath. As much as she wants it to be because Christen is into her, she’s not stupid enough to believe it. 

“Is that why you and Rory broke up?” Kelley asks. 

“He said he could imagine dreaming of me,” Christen says, “and I realized I couldn’t actually imagine dreaming of him. And when I imagined dreaming of someone it was—a girl.”

Kelley finds she magically has the restraint not to ask if it was a specific girl. It’s not magic, not really, more that she’s surprised Christen is opening up to her at all about this and she doesn’t want to ruin it. She wants to be a good friend. She wants that more than she wants Christen to fall in love with her. So she reaches out and places a hand on Christen’s shoulder, and then on the back of her neck.

“You’re brave,” Kelley says, “and you can handle this. Maybe it’s a little different than what you expected. But maybe...maybe it’ll be better.”

She drops her hand immediately after she stops talking so that Christen doesn’t feel the intimacy. Kelley knows that’s all on her end, the way her body hummed with tension when she touched Christen, the way her instincts were screaming at her to lean in and press her lips to Christen’s. 

“Thanks Kel,” Christen says, “you’re a good friend,” and Kelley can feel her heart start to come apart in her chest. 

-

When she meets Alex for real, as teammates, they’re college kids at national team camp. 

At first, they hate each other. It’s easy to do--easy to hate Alex Morgan, with her glossy ponytail and her attitude, and her complete inability to suck at anything, ever. Kelley is used to being the best on the field. She knows that national team stuff is different, both by design and just by logic, but she _hates_ being average. And she hates it even more because Alex has this look she gets on her face when she scores a goal that just makes her blood boil. This look like she’s not even impressed with herself, like she finds it a little bit funny that anyone else _is_ impressed with her. It’s infuriating.

It takes Kelley two days to realize that what she’s feeling isn’t quite jealousy. They combine for a goal in a scrimmage and Alex turns and smiles directly at her, holding her hands out for low-fives, and all of a sudden it’s like Kelley can see everything in slow motion. She can see every detail. The shape of Alex’s nose, the dark blue of her eyes, the strands of her ponytail stuck to the sweat on the side of her neck, her pink prewrap and perfectly-painted nails. When their hands touch, Kelley understands herself. 

She tells Christen that night in Christen’s room.

“You should get her number,” Christen says.

“She goes to Cal,” Kelley says, “I can’t, that’s Romeo and Juliet level shit.”

“Shut up,” Christen says, “you’re so annoying sometimes. You like her, she’s cute.”

“She’s cute and she goes to a rival school and scores a disgusting number of goals against everyone, including us,” Kelley points out.

“So the banter will be fun,” Christen says. “You don’t even know if she likes girls. I’m not saying you should date her. Just that you should get her number. You always tell me to be more brave, but you’re allowed to be a chickenshit all of a sudden?”

“Tomorrow is the last day of camp,” Kelley reminds her, and Christen shrugs. 

“You have great chemistry on the field,” Christen says. When Kelley stares at her and doesn’t answer, Christen waggles her eyebrows, and Kelley sighs heavily, flopping back onto the bed she was sitting on. 

“It’s a very high-risk thing to flirt with her,” Kelley says, “if she’s gonna be on national teams I want to be on and she’s gonna try to kick my ass every college game we play for the next year before I graduate and we’re both going to have soulmates at some point that probably aren’t each other.”

“You’re not asking her to marry you,” Christen says, digging her fingers into Kelley’s ribs until Kelley squirms away from her. When she sits up again, Christen’s expression takes her aback. She looks serious, earnest, and it makes Kelley’s mouth go dry.

“Besides,” Christen says, “she could be your soulmate for all we know. Anyone could.”

_Not you,_ Kelley thinks, but she doesn’t say it. She’s thinking about Alex, about how badly she wants Alex to be gay, about how easy her life would be if she could go to bed tonight and fall into a dream with Alex Morgan and stop thinking so hard about falling in love.

-

On the last day of camp, three things happen.

One: Kelley rolls her ankle and ignores it even though it hurts for ten minutes afterwards. She finishes the day and honestly, it feels fine, if a little sore. It’s her last day of camp and she is not going to sit out the final scrimmage over a sprained ankle. It’ll heal, she has time, it’s not like it’s broken.

Two: Christen scores a motherfucking banger and Kelley literally tackles her to the ground.

Three: Alex Morgan asks for her number.

Kelley has accepted that she’s going to be too chickenshit to do it herself. Alex is good, she’s good, she knows they’ll run into each other again sometime on the same field. Alex is also, Kelley has decided, totally straight. They haven’t spoken about it because they haven’t spoken much at all, but Alex looks like every other hot straight girl at every other school in California and Kelley’s not stupid. She may be the kind of gay that makes her attracted to girls who will never want her, but she’s not stupid enough to pursue them. Not anymore. She’s an adult.

She’s not paying any attention to Alex at all when Alex finds her after the scrimmage and approaches her head-on. She’s smiling and the direct eye contact almost makes Kelley choke on her water.

“You’re at Stanford, right?” Alex asks, “I recognized you.”

“I am a Cardinal,” Kelley confirms.

“Definitely thought your mascot was a tree,” Alex says breezily. “Anyway, what’s your number?”

She doesn’t even give a reason why. Kelley had spent twenty minutes last night with Christen coming up with excuses for asking for Alex’s number. Asking for pointers. Giving pointers. Sending a group picture (requiring her to take a group picture). Offering to help with school (Cal not being known as the beacon of education that Stanford is). Alex has nothing to say, no justification, no explanation, just the question: what’s your number?

“Uh,” Kelley says, “do you have your phone on you?”

Alex digs it out of her bag and hands it over. Kelley’s hands are sweaty and she fumbles to type her number in, checking it twice, three times. She can feel Christen’s eyes on her, and when she hands Alex’s phone back she glances over to see that Christen is smirking at her, and it makes her stomach do something funny. Which is stupid, because she’s over her Christen crush. She must be, because Alex asking for her number has picked her heart rate back up to ‘suicide sprint’ levels.

_Shut the fuck up,_ Kelley mouths at Christen, who quirks an eyebrow at her.

“What?” Alex asks, and Kelley clears her throat.

“Nothing,” Kelley says, “I didn’t say anything.”

“I’ll text you so you have mine,” Alex says, typing on her phone, “that way next time we destroy you guys you can ask me for pointers.”

“I would die first,” Kelley says immediately, and Alex grins at her, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder.

“We’ll see,” she says, and two days ago that attitude would have pissed Kelley off but now it’s just so, so, _so_ hot.

-

She texts Alex first. It’s over something stupid--the weekend’s PL scores--and everything just kind of snowballs from there. Getting close to Alex happens with an immediacy that Kelley has never felt with anyone. It doesn’t feel like it did with Christen, where she had to sort of worm her way in, where it took a while for Christen to trust her enough for them to really be friends. Alex welcomes her into her life like it’s nothing, like it’s exactly what she wants to do, and it changes Kelley’s life.

She’s still friends with Christen, and Rachel, and Ali, and the rest of her teammates. But ALex is the one she tells the second something funny or bad or stupid happens. Alex is the one she calls once a week to talk about soccer shit. Alex is the one she’s most excited to see, when they manage to meet up, which isn’t often.

And Alex is the one she dreams of dreaming about.

-

They both make the roster in 2010. It’s spring, it’s just friendlies, and neither of them made the Algarve Cup roster and it sucked. But what sucked the most was that Alex was supposed to have made it. And Kelley was never going to.

Well, not never. They’re both here, in San Diego, together. So obviously it was closer than Kelley thought, but Alex--if not for her hamstring injury she probably would have played in that tournament. She’s gotten called up more than Kelley and she’s younger. She’s still at Cal and Kelley’s been playing pro and Kelley still feels guilty that she was relieved that Alex didn’t get to go without her.

The thing is this: Kelley wants to do everything with Alex. And being there, in San Diego, knowing they’ll be on their way to Utah together, knowing that the chances are good that they’ll both get to play at some point, for the first time, together--it means everything to Kelley. She’d never say it out loud, and especially not to Alex, but she feels it. She feels lucky. 

“Are you nervous?” Alex asks before the game. Her voice sounds different than it normally does, and Kelley realizes she’s never heard Alex be afraid of anything.

“Nah,” Kelley says, “it’s just soccer.”

She’s not nervous. Not until Alex leans in, tugging her headphones out of her ears, and lowers her voice.

“You’re not afraid to fuck up?” Alex asks.

Kelley is, suddenly. But she’s not going to admit it to Alex, not while Alex is already scared. It’s not what Alex needs to hear. Kelley’s not sure how she knows it, but she does.

“Are you?” Kelley asks, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Alex says immediately, kicking Kelley in the shin, “fuck no.”

“Yeah,” Kelley said, “that’s what I thought.”

-

Kelley goes in for the last thirty minutes.

When she gets tapped to sub in she feels a spike of anxiety so strong she feels it in her fingers. But she turns over her shoulder and flashes a grin and a thumbs up at Alex, who smiles right back and rolls her eyes, and then it’s happening. Heather runs out to greet her and high fives her with both hands. She pauses to place her hand on top of Kelley’s head.

“Good luck,” Heather says, and Kelley jogs onto the field. She takes a deep breath and then she plays. For thirty glorious minutes she wears a US WNT jersey and plays with Abby fucking Wambach and Shannon fucking Boxx. She only touches the ball five times in those thirty minutes but she doesn’t turn the ball over and she does, she thinks, a pretty good job. Alex doesn’t play, and Kelley tries not to be disappointed.

They’re roommates in Utah. Kelley tries not to be weird about it, but it’s hard to avoid it. Everything about being in Alex’s presence feels different. It’s like she can see things more clearly, like she feels her feelings with the volume turned way up. Alex doesn’t even have to be doing anything in particular for Kelley to be distracted by her. She’s lucky that doesn’t happen on the field--she’s too competitive to get distracted by Alex during a game. But it’s _hard_. Alex is so tan somehow, ridiculously so for March, all long lines and cozy athleisure wear. She’s stopped dying her hair blonde and the brown is so much worse. It makes her look older. It makes Kelley wonder how it might be to keep growing with Alex.

She tries to tell herself to relax. Alex is her friend and her teammate and if she’s lucky they’ll both be on the national team for a long time. She has no reason to think Alex is attracted to her, and definitely no reason to think that Alex is her soulmate. You don’t get hints; it just happens. That’s what she was taught, anyway. Just because it tends to make sense after the fact doesn’t mean that it’s something you can predict. And it’s not something you can will into existence. 

But that doesn’t mean she can’t try.

“I bet you’ll play tomorrow,” Kelley says. It’s a little out of nowhere, she realizes. Alex looks up and blinks at her from the other bed, over the top of her magazine. 

“You think so?” Alex asks, and it makes Kelley’s heart skip a beat, the sudden vulnerability in Alex’s voice. She knows Alex well enough now to know that Alex isn’t like this with everyone, and it makes her feel a lot of things that she can’t put into words. Grateful is the only word that comes close.

“Yeah,” Kelley says, “they didn’t put you on a roster for you not to play, especially during some friendlies.”

“It’s cold,” Alex says, and Kelley rolls her eyes.

“Are you gonna complain?” she asks, “at least you’ll be running around if you’re playing.”

“That’s true, I guess,” Alex agrees.

She goes back to her magazine and Kelley goes back to trying not to think about her. She’s doing a pretty decent job of it, too, when Alex speaks again and shatters her concentration.

“I hope we get to play together tomorrow,” Alex says. 

To Kelley it sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a dream. It also sounds unlikely, and she tells herself then and there that the only way it will happen is if her hunch is right and Alex really is meant to be with her.

-

Three hours before the game it starts to snow. 

“I can’t play in this,” Alex complains when they get on the bus, and Kelley rolls her eyes, kicking Alex’s calf until she slides over and lets Kelley join her row on the bus. She knows that Alex is just nervous, but she also knows better than to expose her out loud, especially with Heather sitting right behind them. Instead of saying something about it, she watches the snow go by outside and leans into Alex’s arm.

“Hey,” she says, “is this your first time seeing snow?”

“What?” Alex asks, offended, “no.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Kelley says, “you’re from California.”

“And you’re from the South,” Alex says, “is this _your_ first time seeing snow?”

Kelley grins at her and Alex turns pink, and Kelley tries not to let herself wonder why that might be, even though their arms and thighs are pressed together. It feels like if she looks right at it the whole thing will disappear, like if she gets her hands around it whatever it is will slip right through her fingers.

“I’ve seen snow,” Kelley says, “but never like this.”

During warmups, she’s halfway through a lateral movement drill when a snowball hits her directly in the back of the neck. She spins around and Alex is grinning at her, gloved hands cupped around another snowball.

“Fucker,” Kelley shouts, and then chaos erupts. By the end of it even Shannon is throwing snowballs. Alex trips over her own feet and flops back onto her ass in the snow. Kelley jumps on top of her and pushes snow against Alex’s neck, and Alex squales, kicking her legs and launching Kelley off of her. Alex doesn’t look nervous anymore.

-

Alex goes in after the half. When Pia tells her in the locker room her eyes light up and Kelley, who should feel at least a little bit of jealousy, feels nothing other than a surge of pride that’s probably a little bit too intense. Alex is just her friend. A friend that she’s proud of, but it shouldn’t fill every single space in her body with something warm and fluttery unless it’s something else.

It just doesn’t feel like a crush anymore. She never felt like this about Christen, even when she was proud of Christen, which was frequent. It feels...like something she needs to push aside so she can focus.

In the sixtieth minute Abby finally breaks through, tapping in a ball that would have gone just wide. Kelley leaps off of the bench to scream, watching Abby flop onto her back in the snow and make a snow angel. Her own hands are freezing and she can’t imagine how or why Abby would want to get colder, but then she’s never scored for Team USA so it’s not like she’d understand.

That’s the thought lingering in her head when she gets subbed in a minute later. Alex glances over when Kelley takes the field and smiles at her, and it just feels right. It feels like it’s supposed to last, and it’s not just Alex. It’s something about being on the field, now that she’s done it once, knowing what her job is and being confident that she can do it. When the game ends, in spite of her frozen hands and toes, Kelley finds herself fervently wishing she didn’t have to let it go.

-

Alex sort of has a boyfriend. Kelley finds out that night, when they get back to the hotel, as she continues to thaw out her hands and feet under the covers of her own bed. Alex is doing the same in the next bed over, and for the first time maybe ever, Kelley doesn’t feel like she needs to fill the silence. Then Alex’s phone rings and she turns bright pink, fumbling for it on her nightstand and slipping into her flip-flops. She disappears into the hallway, and Kelley goes through a list of other reasons Alex might have had that reaction, each getting progressively more ridiculous, until Alex comes back in.

“Everything good?” Kelley asks. She’s trying not to be nosy but she knows she’s failing. She’s never been good at subtlety.

“Yeah,” Alex says, “just, this guy. I don’t know. It’s not very interesting.”

She crawls back under the covers of her own bed and Kelley rolls over, resting her head on her hand, propped up on her elbow.

“You can talk to me about anything,” Kelley says, but her heart is beating way faster than it should be.

“We’ve been talking,” Alex says, “we went out on a few dates or whatever, and he’s cute and supportive, like--he watched the game and the one before just in case I got to play. But it just feels…”

Kelley has gone from bereft to hopeful again in a matter of seconds, so quickly that her mouth is dry. Still, she’s trying to keep her expression neutral, even though Alex isn’t looking at her at all. She never really liked boys, never had that moment where she realized that she was dating one and didn’t like it, but she knows what it sounds like and what it looks like. The most important thing for her to do is for her to be there for Alex, the way she was there for Christen. Without expecting anything.

“Feels,” Kelley prompts, and Alex opens her eyes, staring up at the ceiling.

“Just, like a waste of time I guess,” Alex says, “like I don’t know why I would put all this energy into getting to know him and letting him in and stuff if we’re just gonna wake up one day and one of us has had a dream about someone else.”

It’s not exactly what Kelley expected. It’s better than the worst-case scenario, but it still takes her a few seconds to process, long enough that Alex turns her head, eyebrows furrowed.

“Is that stupid?” she asks, and Kelley sits up, shaking her head.

“No,” she says, “definitely not. I totally get that. Because you might wake up and dream about someone else and then it would be like, an automatic breakup. And so weird especially if he didn’t also have his dream about someone too.”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees. “But then how are any of us supposed to do anything? Like, we’re just not supposed to date?”

“Maybe not date,” Kelley says, “if you’re worried about like...this stuff. But we can still--I mean, you know. It’s not like you can’t kiss someone you think is cute. I do it. I just try not to get in too deep over people I know I’m not going to dream about.”

It’s been seven months since Kelley kissed another girl. In August, just before classes started at Stanford, she came to campus to visit her friends and ended up at a party, with her hand pushed under a softball player’s shirt and the girl’s tongue in her mouth, and it was nice to forget, just for a few minutes, what she really wanted.

“You make it sound so easy,” Alex sighs.

Kelley’s not sure what to say to that. 

-

The next time they see each other they’re together in Omaha and it’s June.

It’s so hot that Kelley’s breath dies in her throat every time she tries to take one. She cannot imagine trying to _run_ in this heat, but she’s going to do it, and hopefully Alex will, too. Alex, whose sort-of-boyfriend Servando is in the crowd, in Omaha, for some reason. He wasn’t doing anything, she said. He was free. Of course he was.

Still, Alex hasn’t had her dream and Kelley knows it. She knows it even before Alex leans over in the tunnel and rests her forehead on Kelley’s shoulder from right behind her, before they all start to shuffle into line. It’s just for a second, but the way Kelley’s body reacts to Alex’s touch grounds her somehow, makes here even more sure. Sure of herself on the field, sure of Alex, sure of the universe taking its time with them.

-

She watches Alex’s first goal from her living room. She’s wearing a stupid pair of socks that Alex sent her for her birthday. It’s October, Kelley is a WPS Champion, and she wishes she was on the field in red white and blue but she can wait. And she can wait for Alex, too.

Alex, whose left-footed shot finds the back of the neck, who leaps into her teammates’ arms but calls Kelley right after the game anyway. She doesn’t mention the boy, and Kelley doesn’t ask.

-

Kelley gets to go to China, and this time everything with Alex is different. Alex has been playing with the senior team and her chemistry with them is so obvious, even off the field. She’s laughing with Tobin and the older players like Abby and Carli do more than just acknowledge her existence. When Alex chooses to sit next to her on the bus, even just once, Kelley feels a little starstruck.

“So,” Kelley says, before she can help herself, “did the boy follow you to China?”

She makes a habit of never using his name. It makes him seem less real to her. Alex rolls her eyes and shoves Kelley’s knee.

“Shut up,” Alex says, “there’s no boy.”

“No boy?” Kelley asks. Her voice breaks but Alex ignores it, and Kelley feels like she owed her one. There’s no way Alex hasn’t figured that _something_ is going on by now.

“We’re friends,” Alex says, “still friends. But it’s like, whatever. You know?”

“Totally,” Kelley says. Alex leans back in her seat and her knee knocks against Kelley’s. She doesn’t move it, just looks out the window at the passing landscape, leaving one earbud tucked into her shirt so she can hear it if Kelley wants to talk. Kelley has nothing to say, but it’s not the landscape of Yongchuan she’s watching.

-

Later, Kelley will wish Christen had come with them to the Algarve Cup. But when she makes the roster the only thing she thinks of is Alex, and then Tobin, and then the World Cup, in that order. She knows that they’ll both go. She knows it the way she knows the sun will rise in the morning and set at night. She wants to go with them more than she’s wanted anything in her life, including a soulmate dream.

Because, basically--a dream is guaranteed. Eventually. Making a World Cup roster with two of her best friends isn’t. And, God, she wants Christen there, too, but she can’t have everything.

“I’m really proud of you,” Christen says. Her voice is breaking a bit but it’s the static, Kelley thinks. 

“I probably won’t play much,” Kelley says. She hopes she’s wrong, but she doesn’t want to upset Christen, either. She’s watching as, across the room, Tobin reluctantly allows Alex to paint her toenails. She’s lying on her back on the floor while Alex sits cross-legged at the edge of the bed, with Tobin’s feet in her lap.

“Even if you don’t,” Christen says, “they know who you are and they want you there, and I’m proud of you.”

“I’m proud of you too,” Kelley says. 

Christen, picked fourth overall in the WPS draft. Who she’s going to have to play against, for the first time ever. She doesn’t like that idea at all. 

“You’ll be here next time,” Kelley promises.

“You should sleep,” Christen says, “don’t you guys play tomorrow? It’s late there.”

Of course Christen would know what time it is in Portugal.

“Chris,” she says, “you’ll be here. I want you here.”

“I didn’t know you were picking the rosters,” Christen says, but her voice is soft and it makes Kelley smile, twirling her hair around her finger idly. When she hangs up, both Tobin and Alex are watching her. Some of the sting is taken out of it by the fact that Tobin is still looking at her upside down.

“Who was that?” Alex asks.

“Christen,” Kelley says. It feels weird to say her full first name, so she amends, “Press.”

“Christen Press,” Tobin says, like it’s a name she’s never heard before in her life.

“Are you into her?” Alex asks, “you look into her.”

“No,” Kelley says, “she’s like my kid sister, shut up. Gross.”

It’s a lie, at least partially. She doesn’t think of Christen as her little sister. But she’s not into Christen, either, not anymore, and she really, really needs Alex to believe that. She’s probably a little too forceful, because she doesn’t think Tobin believes her at all.

“Okay, okay,” Alex laughs, “sorry for the wild guess. I’m just trying to figure you out.”

-

Kelley plays 45 minutes at the Algarve Cup, all of them against Finland. She already knows, by the end of the game, that she won’t see any time in the Final. She’s not stupid. She got 45 minutes mostly as a courtesy; Pia obviously doesn’t think she’s cut out for the senior team, and Kelley doesn’t think she’s gotten enough of a chance to prove anyone wrong. 

It fucking sucks.

It sucks even more rooming with Tobin, whose life is so easy. Tobin, who starts to doze off with the lamp on, her Bible open in her lap.

“Tobin,” Kelley hisses.

Tobin snores softly.

“Tobes,” Kelley says, more loudly, and Tobin jerks awake, blinking rapidly.

“Um, what?” Tobin asks, and Kelley gestures violently at the lamp. Tobin kills the lights sheepishly and Kelley spends the ten minutes it takes to fall asleep simmering, trying to control how annoyed she is, knowing that it has nothing to do with the lamp or the snoring and everything to do with how easily Tobin folds into the team, how she compliments Alex on the field. 

It’s no surprise that she dreams of Alex. They’re back in China, on the bus, only this time they’re alone. It takes Kelley ten seconds to realize what’s happening. When she does she reaches out to touch Alex’s forearm, and Alex turns to look at her. Kelley doesn’t feel surprised.

“I knew it,” she says.

“You did?” Alex asks. She slides her hand into Kelley’s, and their fingers fit together like they were meant for it.

“I hoped,” Kelley says. It’s the first time she lets Alex see how she really feels, and she can hear how earnest her voice sounds. Usually she would be embarrassed, but not anymore. There’s no reason to be embarrassed in front of Alex anymore, not ever again. It’s a relief because Kelley is _always_ embarrassing herself in front of Alex.

She squeezes Alex’s fingers, and then she wakes up.

-

When Kelley finds Alex’s eyes at breakfast, over a basket of muffins, her heart starts racing immediately. She smiles, and Alex smiles back, but she seems tired and distracted. Kelley wants to worm her way up under Alex’s arm, but she doesn’t. Instead she comes around the buffet table to stand next to her, close enough that their arms are touching. When Alex shuffles away, just an inch, Kelley’s stomach clenches.

“Al,” Kelley says, “can we talk?”

Alex reaches for a muffin and yawns.

“Can we talk after the game?” Alex says, like it’s nothing.

“Um,” Kelley says, “yeah, of course.”

Alex is right, even though she’s not saying it explicitly. They have to focus, it’s the final game, and Kelley knows that Alex expects to play. Why wouldn’t she? She scored twice last game. She’s unstoppable.

Unstoppable except for the fact that Pia stops her, and Tobin, Kelley, and Alex sit together on the bench for most of the game. Tobin sits between them, bouncing her knee up and down. Eventually Kelley reaches over and places her hand on Tobin’s knee just to stop her, and Tobin gives her a sheepish look.

“Sorry,” she says.

“It’s okay,” Kelley says, “I get it.” And she does. She feels like she’s about to vibrate out of her skin. She needs to get on the field or next to Alex or both, but all she can do is sit there and try to focus on the game happening in front of her. It’s impossible. She’s never felt so trapped at a game before.

Alex goes in around the 75th minute. Kelley tries to make eye contact with her but completely fails. Next to her, Tobin leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. Amy takes Alex’s spot on the bench, and Kelley tries to empty her brain. Still, as she watches Alex play--and she is mostly watching Alex--all she can think about is the way Alex took her hand in the dream, compared with the way Alex shied away from her at breakfast.

Just minutes before the end of the game, Alex receives a long ball in the box. It’s bouncing and there’s a defender on either side of her, but she muscles them off and gives herself just enough room to get her foot on the ball and send it into the net. It wouldn’t have been enough room for anyone else. There’s no way to describe the physics behind what Alex can do. She just can’t be stopped.

When Kelley leaps to her feet Tobin is right there with her, both of them holding onto each other and jumping up and down, but there’s a tightness in Kelley’s chest that doesn’t go away, even after the game is over.

-

She doesn’t get ahold of Alex until that night. While Tobin is in the shower, Alex knocks, and the relief that Kelley feels is immediate and head to toe.

“Hi,” she says, stepping back to let Alex in. She's been thinking about this moment all day but now that it’s here she’s nervous and shy in a way she’s not sure she’s ever been with a girl before. She wants to touch Alex but she can’t imagine actually doing it. Maybe that’s something that will come later--the courage to do something about the coiling of desire behind her ribs.

“Hey,” Alex says. _She_ doesn’t look nervous at all, just a little bit tired. But her body language is so relaxed, and she flops down onto Kelley’s bed on her back, then rolls over onto her stomach and props her chin in her hands so she can look at Kelley. Kelley sits on the bed, crossing her legs under her, and takes a deep breath, but Alex speaks first.

“Is this about Christen?” Alex asks.

Kelley’s breath dies in her throat.

“Um, what?” she asks.

“Because we were joking about it the other night,” Alex says, “but you seemed kind of--I don’t know. Like something else was going on. So I assumed we were going to talk about that. She’s cute, do you know if she likes girls?”

“She--” Kelley hesitates, trying to process Alex’s sentence around the roar of her own heartbeat in her ears, “I definitely wasn’t...didn’t want to talk to you about Christen.”

Alex maneuvers to sit facing Kelley, holding her hands out. Kelley doesn’t take them; she’s too afraid to move, even to take a breath.

“I wanted to talk to you about the dream,” Kelley says, “last night, when we--the, you know. _The_ dream.”

The silence that follows seems to last forever. Alex looks at Kelley’s hands, wringing in her lap, then flicks her gaze back up to Kelley’s face, searching Kelley’s expression for something Kelley doesn’t know how to give. Kelley holds her breath until her chest aches and then she sucks in air like she’s dying and she knows it’s loud even before Alex’s eyebrows crease with concern. When she speaks again her voice is soft and hoarse and Kelley is suddenly on the verge of tears.

“Kel,” Alex says, “I didn’t...have a dream last night, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t remember,” Kelley says. It’s not a question. She had known it the moment Alex shuffled away from her at breakfast, the moment Alex’s face didn’t light up when they saw each other that morning. Alex shakes her head. Kelley is surprised by the tear that rolls down her cheek, but not as much as Alex, who reaches for Kelley’s hands and clenches them so hard that it almost hurts.

“There’s nothing to remember,” Kelley realizes out loud. She closes her eyes. She can still hear Tobin in the shower. Tobin’s going to come back into the room and see this mess and Kelley’s not going to say a word about it and they’re just going to live in that awkwardness until the next time they have camp, she knows it.

“Fuck,” she mumbles.

“Kelley,” Alex says, “it’s okay. I’m not going to say anything to anyone, I promise.”

“I thought you were my soulmate,” Kelley says, just on the edge of hysteria, “fuck. I’m sorry. This is so embarrassing, Al, just--can we forget this ever happened? I need us to just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“I wish I was,” Alex blurts. Kelley jerks her hands away and cranes over to grab the tissues from the side table to hide her face.

“Don’t,” she says, when Alex opens her mouth again, “please don’t. Don’t say that.”

“Sorry,” Alex says, “I want to help.”

“Just go, I think,” Kelley says, “I need to, like—and Tobin—“

“Yeah,” Alex agrees.

“Let’s just try to forget this happened,” Kelley begs, “please.”

“Okay,” Alex says, reaching out for Kelley and then stopping herself short, “but you...you don’t have to be embarrassed. That’s all.”

Kelley buries her face in her hands. When she looks up, Alex is gone.

-

It takes two weeks for things to feel okay again. 

Alex starts texting her first. Just stupid stuff, the same way they became friends in the first place. The first few times Kelley resents it, but Alex persists and Kelley lets her. Initially she tells herself it’s just because they still have to play together, but the truth is that she loves Alex. And she knows Alex loves her, too, just not in the way she had hoped. The fact that Alex loves her at all, even like this, does help. Just not quite enough.

She’s at the age where people are starting to have their dreams all around her. She tries to tell herself that _her_ dream is the World Cup roster and not a soulmate, but then she doesn’t play in the London friendly, doesn’t even get called up for Columbus or Cary, and can’t even be surprised when her name isn’t on the roster. There are people who are surprised by it, but Kelley’s not--not sure she can even feel surprise anymore, which might be a good thing. Either way, she’s left off, and that means she’s not even there to see it when Tarp tears her ACL.

She doesn’t get called to Cary. She knows there’s another game, one last one in New Jersey, but she’s not expecting the phone call that she gets.

Kelley feels horrible for Lindsay, but she’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, not when Pia’s phone call makes her feel something for the first time in months. It makes her feel a lot of things, actually, and she’s not really equipped for it after spending months numbing herself. 

She’s relieved. She’s excited. She’s fucking terrified. She’s going to the World Cup.

-

She doesn’t play against North Korea. They win 2-0. Rachel scores. Alex plays fifteen minutes and Kelley spends the game glued to Tobin’s side on the bench, chomping on the gum that Mittsy offered them.

She doesn’t play against Colombia. They win 3-0. Tobin plays a half hour and Kelley makes sure that Becky sits in between her and Alex so there’s no chance that Kelley will have to touch her, or even make eye contact with her, unless she wants to (she doesn’t).

Kelley gets to play against Sweden, coming in for Megan for the last fifteen minutes or so--seventeen plus stoppage, not that Kelley is counting--and they _lose_. Alex is already on the field when Kelley gets there, because she came in at the half. Abby has just scored to bring them within a goal, and Kelley spends her almost-twenty minutes doing everything she can to get them another, including feeding the ball directly to Alex. She can’t help but feel like a few months ago they could have connected for a goal, but it doesn’t happen. They lose 2-1 and it feels horrible. It almost feels worse than riding the bench during a win.

They get Brazil for the quarterfinal. Kelley is too nervous to sleep, and once Tobin is snoring she slips into the hallway. She doesn’t want to go outside, so she just slides to the floor and sits there with her head in her hands, breathing. 

When she hears Abby’s voice she jumps so hard she bumps her head on the wall behind her.

“Hey,” Abby says, “whoa, sorry, you okay?”

Kelley takes a deep breath.

“Yeah,” she says, “sorry, I’m fine.”

Abby stands there and looks at her, and Kelley tries to think of something to say, some excuse, but there’s nothing on the tip of her tongue. Instead of saying anything else, Abby joins her on the floor. Sitting next to her makes Kelley feel small, makes her feel like a little kid. Abby rubs her hands together and Kelley glances up at her. She thinks she’ll get away with it, but she ends up making eye contact with Abby and feels herself force a smile.

“Nervous?” Abby asks.

Kelley shrugs.

“Not really,” she lies, “I don’t have a lot to be nervous about, right? I mean I won’t--I trust you guys.”

She had almost said she won’t play much, which they both know, but she knows she’s not supposed to say it. She already feels like she’s in trouble, long before Abby speaks again.

“I remember what it was like,” Abby says, “I know I’m old, but I definitely remember sitting on the bench and feeling like I wasn’t really a part of the team.”

Kelley can’t imagine it.

“I know I’m part of the team,” she says instead, because it’s true and she knows it’s what she’s supposed to say.

“You’ll feel it, too,” Abby says, “I promise. But it’s okay if you don’t yet.”

-

She doesn’t play against Brazil. She doesn’t play against France. And she doesn’t play in the final, so she doesn’t get to take and miss a penalty kick. In the end, she’s relieved about that, even though she’ll never admit it out loud.

-

When Kelley ends up on the roster for London, she promises herself she’s going to be a part of the team, whether she plays a minute or not. She’s over the Alex thing, as long as she doesn’t think too hard about it, and she’s fully focused on coming home with an Olympic gold medal and _not_ on falling in love. 

But things change with Christen. It happens once they get to London, and really, what happens is that Kelley starts to notice things. She notices the way that Christen’s eyes linger on her and the way that Christen touches her--the way she always has, but just for a moment longer, her fingertips lingering on Kelley’s collar, or on her leg on the bus.

Kelley knows better than to get in her head about what it means, in the grand scheme of things. She still has the urge to fantasize, to wonder, but this time she’s able to stop herself. She focuses on the little things. The way she ties her cleats before every game. The sound of the ball hitting her foot. The particular smell of the Village, of her own room, of the hallway and the fields. The way that Christen’s breath tickles her cheek when Christen falls asleep on her shoulder after the gold-medal game, on the way to their first of many official celebrations.

“I want to get drunk,” Kelley tells her, when Christen wakes up. Christen grins at her.

“Then get drunk,” she says, “you earned it, babe.”

-

Kelley gets drunk. So does Christen. It’s easy for Kelley to lose track of Alex and to tell herself that she doesn’t really care where Alex is or who she’s dancing with. All she cares about right now is how it feels to finally be here.

She played every minute. Not the way she imagined she would--she never thought she’d play _defense_\--but she did, and she felt like a part of the team the whole time, and they won the whole damn thing. And her heart doesn’t hurt when she thinks about Alex anymore, and so many of her best friends were there doing it with her, and she’d be lying if it didn’t feel nice to have Christen practically glued to her.

At their last stop of the night, Christen is draped over Kelley’s back. Kelley takes her hand and leans back into Christen, testing it out to see if Christen will balk at the contact and expecting to be nicely rejected. They’ve always been close but not like this. The way Christen is touching her, with a hand low on Kelley’s hip, doesn’t feel like the way that friends touch each other, and Kelley’s not stupid enough to ignore that, so instead she pushes her luck. When she grinds back against Christen and Christen’s grip on her just tightens, Kelley is surprised at how relieved she feels just to be wanted.

Christen deserves a medal, Kelley thinks. When she says as much, she swears for a second that Christen looks like she’s going to cry. It hits Kelley then that as unwanted as she felt during the run up to the World Cup, Christen must be feeling that threefold, and maybe she hasn’t gotten to have her Abby moment, maybe nobody’s told her how important she is.

“I needed you here,” Kelley says forcefully, “and you deserve a medal for that.”

The way that Christen looks at her then, Kelley’s not surprised at where they end up--in her room, with Christen pressing her up against the door, Kelley’s hand inching around to Christen’s lower back as she tilts her head back and opens her mouth into the kiss. 

She flips them, pressing Christen into the door and pushing Christen’s jacket and shirt over her shoulders. She keeps waiting for Christen to put a stop to things, but it doesn’t happen. Instead Christen’s breath comes a little faster when Kelley kisses her neck, and Christen tangles her hands in Kelley’s hair. Usually Kelley likes to be in control of things like this, but it’s different with Christen, who she’s known for what feels like forever. Christen’s just so capable--and she knows what she wants--and what she wants is _Kelley_. Kelley doesn’t even think twice about sinking back onto the bed and taking Christen down on top of her.

“We can’t do this,” Christen says afterwards, when Kelley’s legs are jello and Christen’s hair is a mess. Kelley knows that she doesn’t mean because they’re teammates. If Christen really wanted to, if she felt like it was the right thing, being teammates wouldn’t stop her. Kelley takes a deep breath in increments, watching Christen’s fingertips move against her hip, and waits for the hurt to come, but it doesn’t materialize.

“Alex won’t be back tonight,” Kelley says, pretending she doesn’t know it’s deeper than that, “we can do whatever we want.”

The light seeping through the blinds hits Christen’s face in a way, just then, that makes her look a lot older than they are. Older and sadder. Kelley fights back the urge to kiss her, because this time, looking at her, Kelley knows what she didn’t before: Christen is not her soulmate. She would know it if she was. It doesn’t bother her the way it used to. No matter what, Christen is here with her right now, and for now that’s what matters.

“Just in general,” Christen says, “not tonight. It’s not like I don’t—I mean…”

“I know,” Kelley says.


	2. everything i know (and all the lies i tell myself so i can sleep)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily has a history of getting crushes on girls who don’t want her.

**pick apart the pieces you left  
don't you worry about it, don't you worry about it  
try and give yourself some rest  
and let me worry about it, let me worry about it**

-

Emily has a history of getting crushes on girls who don’t want her. 

It’s a thing. All through college it was a _funny_ thing. The two straight girls who she convinced to date her for a month or so. The professor she had a crush on who vaguely flirted with her a few weeks after she graduated. It was funny. 

It’s not funny at twenty-five. 

Living with Lindsey is the stupidest thing she’s ever done, and she doesn’t need anyone to tell her that. Makenzy does anyway, because she’s been doing it since they met at UVA, and Emily sighs and flops dramatically into her parent’s pool, back-first. Makenzy stands over her, hands on her hips. 

“Seriously, Sonnett,” she says, “the self-destruction thing isn’t cute anymore.”

“I’m not doing it on _purpose_,” Emily says, floating on her back, windmilling her arms. 

“You offered to live with her,” Makenzy says. 

“She needed a roommate,” Emily replies. 

“You are impossible,” Makenzy laughs, and tugs her t-shirt over her head. “You better dream about this one.”

Emily feels sure that she will. 

-

Lindsey and Emily have a routine.

Emily usually wakes up first. They eat breakfast and get coffee on the way to training. They get coffee after training and linger at whatever spot they chose, joking around and taking stupid pictures of each other. No matter what they’re doing, no matter where they’re going, they pretty much spend all their time together. To Emily it feels like a dream.

“That sounds like a nightmare,” her sister says, “I don’t like anyone that much.”

“Maybe you’re just bad at making friends,” Emily says.

“You wouldn’t want to spend that much time with anyone else,” Emma says, “it’s not like you’d want to spend every waking moment with Rose.”

“Rose would kill me,” Emily replies.

“And you’d deserve it,” Emma agrees, laughing.

Emma does not call Emily’s bluff, but Emily knows it’s not because she hasn’t noticed it. Emma knows everything. She’s seen Emily with a crush before. For whatever reason, she’s being _nice_ about this one, and that makes Emily feel like panicking, like she’s really done a number on her life this time. At the same time, she can’t imagine how hitching her wagon to Lindsey Horan could possibly be a bad thing.

This is how having a soulmate is supposed to feel. She was a teenager once, she’s read every stupid Cosmopolitan article everyone else has read, she knows all the symptoms, she knows there are people who realize it before the universe gives them the actual dream. Lindsey hasn’t gotten it, or at least she hasn’t brought it up, but that’s just because she’s still figuring out that she likes girls at all. 

They’ve had _that_ conversation.

“How did you know?” Lindsey had asked.

Emily was ignoring her, watching a girl across the taproom pour beers for patrons, noticing the muscles in her forearms. Being obvious about it because she could, because nobody knew who she was in Portland, because her parents were thousands of miles away and she knew Lindsey wouldn’t care.

Lindsey nudged Emily’s knee under the table with her foot.

“How did you know you were into girls?” she asked.

It was halfway through their first season. Emily wasn’t in love with Lindsey yet. That’s why it was easy for her to answer and feel nothing about it.

“The last time I kissed a guy I was a junior in high school,” she said, “and I almost barfed. So…”

“So it’s obvious,” Lindsey said, “that makes sense.”

“Not for everyone,” Emily said, “it’s a spectrum or whatever and obviously some people like both. I guess I didn’t really know until I kissed a girl. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The way that girls in my grade couldn’t stop thinking or talking about boys.”

Lindsey was so obviously thinking about that. So obviously thinking about kissing a girl and figuring shit out. And because Emily wasn’t in love with her yet, because they were new to the same team and Emily was apparently less stupid then than she is now, she hadn’t offered herself as tribute for that experiment.

That’s how, in their first year as roommates, Emily walks in on Lindsey making out with a girl she doesn’t recognize.

It’s completely fine that Lindsey is dating other girls. Lindsey can date whoever she wants. She doesn’t know that Emily is her soulmate so it’s not like she’s _cheating_ on Emily, who has no right to feel this...cheated on.

But, God. How does Lindsey not know? How is it possible, when Emily wakes up and wanders into the kitchen and Lindsey hands her a cup of coffee and they’re standing toe to toe, for Emily to be the only one feeling the pull deep in her gut?

She still doesn’t tell anyone. There’s a moment at camp, when she’s lying in bed watching Rose try to maneuver herself into the NormaTec without putting her phone down, that she considers telling Rose. Rose knows Lindsey. Rose would get it. Rose would definitely agree with her that Lindsey’s her soulmate, probably. But also, Rose can’t keep her mouth shut, and Rose would want to get the ball rolling, and Emily’s too afraid of Lindsey to do that.

Later she’ll be glad she didn’t.

-

Lindsey barrels into the kitchen, eyes wide, and Emily almost chokes on her cereal. Lindsey looks terrified, and Emily’s brain goes haywire.

“What?” she says, “what is it? Did I get traded?” 

“What?” Lindsey says. 

“What?” Emily says. 

“Is that like, an option?” Lindsey asks. 

Emily makes an embarrassing sound, somewhere between a wheeze and a laugh. 

“Uh, I hope not?” she says, trying to lighten the mood with a joke, trying to kill whatever it is that’s got Lindsey feeling so frantic. She has this horrible icicle of fear forming in her stomach, like her heart already knows what’s happening even if her brain hasn’t gotten there yet. It feels bad. It feels so, so bad. Bad enough that she gets the most ridiculous and urgent desire to run, physically run.

Lindsey doesn’t speak again right away and Emily turns away from her, hiding her burning face in the fridge for a second as if she’s looking for the milk that’s directly in front of her. She grabs it, takes a deep breath, then turns back around. She’s pouring it when Lindsey decides to keep going.

“I dreamt about Rose last night,” Lindsey says, and Emily’s heart stutters in her chest. She finishes pouring the milk, somehow doesn’t spill a drop, and takes a deep breath.

“Did you?” she asks. It can’t be that kind of dream. It’s probably just a weird sex dream, which is awful and uncomfortable but definitely something Emily can handle. Lindsey is quiet again, and Emily forces herself to take a bite and chew. 

“Like,” Lindsey says, “she was _in_ my dream.”

Somehow Emily’s brain takes a hard left at ‘devastated’ and comes out with ‘a little annoyed.’ She’s not really in control of any of that anymore. Lindsey has to be fucking with her. Emily can maybe accept--_maybe_ accept--that Lindsey isn’t her soulmate. She cannot, and will not accept that Rose Lavelle is. There’s no way. Rose has never even expressed a little bit of interest in girls, or in Lindsey, really, beyond the normal stupid banter they all do with each other. Which leaves only one explanation: Lindsey is fucking with her.

“You’re really not funny,” Emily says, “I’m actually a little worried about how unfunny you are. I think you missed a critical stage in your development as a human.”

“Emily,” Lindsey says, “I’m serious.”

Emily can’t remember the last time that Lindsey said her actual name. Hearing it from Lindsey’s mouth like this makes everything much more real. She can feel the anger and fear and frustration being sapped out of her the longer she stands there, looking at Lindsey. Lindsey who is very obviously terrified and confused. Lindsey who needs her.

“Wow,” Emily says, “actually, that makes sense.”

It doesn’t. Nothing makes sense. But Emily knows Lindsey well enough to see the panic behind her eyes and she’d rather die than make this worse. They stand there nodding at each other for an awkwardly long time. Emily wants to hug her but she’s pretty sure she hasn’t earned that in this conversation yet, and the idea of getting physically close to Lindsey right now makes every muscle in her body go tense.

“So,” Emily clears her throat, “what did she say?”

Emily does not want Rose to fuck this up. She wants, more than anything, for Lindsey to be happy. But if there’s a chance, however miniscule, that Rose did fuck it up, that Lindsey looks like this because Rose rejected her--

“Like in the dream?” Lindsey asks, and Emily blinks at her. Lindsey checks her phone and her face falls. Rose hasn’t fucked it up, then. She just hasn’t said anything at all. Lindsey looks like she might cry, and Emily digs her nails into her palms.

“She’s probably practicing,” Emily says, “I mean, we’re gonna be busy too, so I’m sure she’ll talk to you about it later. There’s no rush, right?”

-

After practice, Lindsey is sullen and quiet. Emily puts on The Vampire Diaries and Lindsey doesn’t react, doesn’t say a word through a full episode. It makes _Emily_ anxious trying to guess what might be going on with Rose, but somehow she knows Lindsey’s too stubborn to do anything about it. Emily tries to coax Lindsey into calling Rose but she brushes her off and it’s not like Emily’s particularly interested in fighting her on it. 

But then, halfway through Rainbow Road, Lindsey starts to speak, as if Emily doesn’t have to concentrate to keep from giving up her first-place spot.

“If it happens again tonight,” Lindsey says, “then I know it’s for real and I’ll call her when I get up, since she’s a couple hours ahead. But if not then it was probably just weird.”

Slowly, Emily realizes exactly what the nature of this disaster is. It’s possible--not probable, but possible--that Rose didn’t have the same dream, that Lindsey just had a random dream about Rose that freaked her out. 

“You think maybe she didn’t have the same dream?” Emily asks. Lindsey looks annoyed, and Emily can’t really understand why. It’s not like they’ve really spoken about it. All she knew was that Lindsey was upset, that Rose hadn’t said a word.

“If she did then why didn’t she text me about it or call me or something?” Lindsey asks. Emily glances over at Lindsey’s side of the screen just in time to see Lindsey run off the edge of the track. She doesn’t have an answer for anything. She’s never felt so useless in her life.

“Maybe she was waiting for you to do it,” she says. She’s not convinced, though. It doesn’t sound like Rose.

“No,” Lindsey says, “that doesn’t sound like her. But then even if it is that, if it happens again tonight I’ll do it anyway, so it’ll be fine.”

“Sure,” Emily says.

She finishes the race and sits back, crossing her arms. For the second time today she resists the urge to reach for Lindsey, to pause the game and pull Lindsey in for a hug. But she doesn’t think Lindsey wants to be touched, and she’s afraid that if she does touch Lindsey it’ll all be so obvious. She doesn’t trust herself to keep her mouth shut.

Lindsey pauses the game and throws down her remote. Emily shrinks into the couch and bites her tongue to keep from making a joke to diffuse the tension. It’s all she knows how to do, but it’s exactly the wrong thing for this moment and she knows it. 

It doesn’t seem like Lindsey’s very excited about having a soulmate.

“_What_?” Lindsey asks.

“Nothing,” Emily says, “just weird that you’re like, avoiding it. Like, aren’t you supposed to be excited? You know who your soulmate is so now you can get together and stop wasting time, it’s supposed to be…”

“How would you know how it’s supposed to be?” Lindsey snaps, and Emily blinks.

She doesn’t even feel it. That’s how she knows she’s in trouble--it’s the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to her, definitely the meanest thing Lindsey’s ever said to her, and she doesn’t even register it. She has fully shut down all emotions and she knows from experience it’s going to come out as soon as she’s alone.

“I guess I wouldn’t,” she says, and goes to the kitchen. She just needs to move, just needs to get away from Lindsey, but Lindsey follows her, and Emily can feel her shoulders tense and up by her ears.

“Sonny,” Lindsey says, “I’m sorry, sorry, that was so mean.”

“Whatever,” Emily says, “I mean you’re right, it’s not like I would know.”

There’s something nice about having enough control to be able to say that and mean it. Something really comforting about knowing that Lindsey has no idea what she’s feeling, something powerful about being able to create her own reality like this. But also, she sort of wants to throw up. She’s struggling to open a stupid cheese stick when Lindsey catches up with her and takes it gently out of her hands. It shouldn’t make Emily feel the way it does. She shoves half the stick in her mouth without saying a word.

“That was really mean of me to say,” Lindsey says, “and I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry, I’m such a mess but I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“Well, apology accepted since you opened this for me,” Emily says around a mouthful of cheese. 

She’s verging on hysteria now. If she goes for a run she might be able to process some of this, make enough sense out of it all so that she can function like a normal human being. In the meantime Lindsey is looking at her like a kicked puppy, and Emily’s not sure how much more she can do to set Lindsey up with Rose without losing her mind entirely.

Lindsey hugs her. Emily want sit to be over but Lindsey won’t let go until she hugs back. When she does, Lindsey seems satisfied, and Emily takes a second to look at her. She tries to imagine it--Rose and Lindsey. Lindsey putting her arm around Rose like Emily’s seen her do a thousand times. Only this time it would be different, they’re going to look at each other like _that_, she can feel it. She can also feel that she’s going to make it worse.

“Did you think about it before?” Emily asks, “like did you already have a crush on her or was it out of nowhere?”

She wants to hear no. She wants to hear that Lindsey is as confused as she is, that it doesn’t feel right. She’s sure that’s how Rose is feeling too, and that’s probably why Rose hasn’t said anything. Maybe there’s just been a big, stupid, cosmic mistake.

“I mean, we flirted,” Lindsey says.

“Weirdest foreplay I’ve ever seen,” Emily jokes, and for a second she feels like herself again.

“I guess I was into her,” Lindsey continues, “but it seemed like...stupid. Like a waste of time because I was gonna dream about someone eventually.”

Emily knows the feeling.

“And you never thought maybe you’d dream about her,” Emily says.

“No,” Lindsey says, “I guess not.”

This is where Lindsey would look up and say something. This is where Lindsey would say--I thought it was you. And then, somehow, they’d figure this mess out together. Instead, Lindsey’s eyes remain unfocused and she’s still clutching her phone in one hand, like any second Rose might call her.

“Well,” Emily says, “let’s see what happens tonight.”

-

What happens is that it’s the real thing.

Rose really is Lindsey’s soulmate. And Emily really isn’t.

It takes her a week before she can answer Rose’s Snapchats. She’s careful not to open the app at all, careful to make some excuse about why she hasn’t opened it, careful to sound and act as normal as possible and only to cry alone in her room with the blanket pulled up over her head, after Lindsey has gone to bed and won’t wonder. After the first week it gets easier. Not easier to accept, but easier to live in this world that’s Emily’s world now.

She wishes it were as simple as it always sounded--she wishes that she could flip the switch now that she knows Lindsey is off limits and just stop _feeling_ so much. But she can’t. She still lives and plays with Lindsey and Rose still doesn’t, and Emily still feels, at least 20% of the time, as though Lindsey is hers.

Lindsey is still her best friend. Her roommate, her teammate, the most important person in her life. But she’s not the most important person in Lindsey’s life anymore. Nothing feels worse than the jealousy Emily has to bite back all the time. When she walks into the living room and Lindsey is FaceTiming Rose and Emily feels it snake up her spine.

The worst is when Lindsey’s not around at all. The absence of Lindsey is worse than having Lindsey around and distracted. 

Eventually, she promises herself, she will get over it. She has to, but also she’s going to, because she loves Lindsey and she loves Rose and she wants them to be happy. She’d rather die than admit to anyone how she’s feeling, even Emma, who’s just going to parade out her ‘I told you so’ like she always does, and only apologize once Emily cries. 

It’s not like Emma’s mean, just that nobody, even her twin, can tell how upset Emily is until she has a breakdown. She holds her cards so close to her chest that even _she_ isn’t sure when she’s okay and when she isn’t. Most of the time it works for her, and she’s promising herself that will be the case this time, too. She doesn’t know if she’s okay or not, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s going to be. Because it’s August, and the season is still going, and she’s a World Cup winner with a NWSL Championship to win.


End file.
